August 9, 2023 Russia-Ukraine news

Our live coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine has moved here.

Ukraine has provided the Pentagon with a report about the use of controversial American cluster munitions in the fight with Russia, a Ukrainian official told CNN on Wednesday. 

The official said the information transmitted to the defense department included both the number of rounds fired and the number of Russian targets destroyed, though the official declined to say what those figures are.  

The expected report was a request by the US as part of the agreement to send artillery rounds with cluster bomblets — known as DPICMs — to Ukraine. In an interview with CNN last month, Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said he was planning to submit the report to his counterpart, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

CNN has asked the Pentagon for comment. 

Ukrainian officials have said they expect the DPICMs to be more effective than standard artillery rounds, particularly against large groupings of Russian troops and equipment. Last month the White House’s John Kirby said they “having an impact on Russia’s defensive formations and Russia’s defensive maneuvering.”

The US, Russia and Ukraine are not signatories to the Convention on Cluster Munitions which bans the production and use of clusters and was signed by more than 100 countries. 

Volodymyr Zelensky speaks to media during the NATO Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania on July 12.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated his call for more air defenses following a Russian attack that left two people dead in the city of Zaporizhzhia on Wednesday.

“Today, Russian terrorists hit Zaporizhzhia again — an ordinary building was hit, a church and a residential building were damaged,” he said in his evening address. “Our entire territory needs much more air defense systems than we have now,” he added. 

He said the Ukrainian military is working “step by step” to ramp up Air Force capabilities.

“I have no doubt that F-16s will be in our skies,” Zelensky said, something he has asked allies to provide for the last few months.

“Tomorrow I will continue this work, trying my best to provide more protection for the sky,” he added. 

One person has been killed and three people were injured after Ukrainian shelling in the eastern city of Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), said Wednesday. 

Pushiin added that “the enemy fired 163 rounds of ammunition” which included “cluster-type artillery.” CNN is not able to independently verify this claim.

Rescue operations continue, Pushilin said. 

Ukrainian officials also blamed Russia of attacks on Wednesday. At least two people were killed in shelling of the city of Zaporizhzhia in southeast Ukraine, Ukrainian officials said.

Buildings were destroyed in a Russian attack on the city of Zaporizhzhia on Wednesday.

Medics were able to save the life of one of the three people who authorities said was killed in the Russian attack on the city of Zaporizhzhia in southeast Ukraine on Wednesday, according to Ihor Klymenko, the country’s minister of internal affairs.

Klymenko said two people were killed and seven have been injured in the attack. 

Earlier, President Volodymyr Zelensky had said three people were killed in the attack.

“The rescue operation is underway. All victims will be provided with the necessary assistance. And this war crime of Russia will certainly face its sentence. And the response to Russian terrorists will be on the frontline - thanks to our heroic warriors,” Zelensky said in a Telegram post.

Yurii Malashko, head of the Zaporizhzhia region military administration, said the number of those injured “may increase as windows in many apartments were smashed and glass shattered.”

A church and retail outlets were some of the buildings destroyed in the attack, Malashko added.

This post has been updated to reflect the latest death toll announced by authorities.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) shelled Russia’s western Belgorod region, leaving one person dead and several wounded, the regional governor said Wednesday. 

“The village of Gorkovsky in the Graivoron Urban District was shelled by the AFU […] One man died from shrapnel wounds. Four others were injured,” the Belgorod region’s governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said in a Telegram post. 

The governor also said that a drone was shot down over the town of Shebekino, but there were no casualties or damage.

“The air defense system was triggered over Shebekinsky (Shebekino) urban district. An aerial target on the approach to the city was shot down. … According to preliminary data, there are no known casualties or damage,” he said.

More background: In May, a group of anti-Putin Russian nationals, who are aligned with the Ukrainian army, claimed responsibility for an attack in the Belgorod region, which borders northeastern Ukraine.

Two areas of the region were then hit by drones, according to Gladkov, causing two houses to catch fire. On May 23, drone attacks sent at least nine people to hospital, Gladkov said.

View of The White House in Washington, DC on October 20, 2022. 

The White House is downplaying a CNN poll that shows most Americans oppose Congress providing additional funding to support Ukraine in its war with Russia ahead of a reported administration request for more aid.

Kirby said the aid is not only important to the people of Ukraine but also to European and NATO allies “given that this fighting is on the doorstep” of many of those countries.

Additionally, he said, it’s a matter of “national security of the American people.” 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called for continued support for Ukraine during an event in Louisville, Kentucky, on Wednesday. He pushed back on arguments from House Republicans — and some Senate Republicans — that Russian aggression in Ukraine is not an issue for the US.

“Most of the money that we spend related to Ukraine is actually spent in the US, replenishing weapons, more modern weapons. So, it’s actually employing people here and improving our own military for what may lie ahead,” he said.

What the poll says: Last week a CNN poll showed that overall 55% of people said the US Congress should not authorize additional funding to support Ukraine. That’s compared to 45% who said Congress should authorize such funding.

About 51% said that the US has already done enough to help Ukraine while 48% said it should do more.

A poll conducted in the early days of the Russian invasion in late February 2022 found 62% of people felt the US should have been doing more.

Partisan divisions have widened since that poll, too, with most Democrats and Republicans now on opposing sides of questions on the US role in Ukraine.

CNN’s Morgan Rimmer contributed reporting to this post.

The Russian Ministry of Education this week unveiled new history textbooks with sections about the “special military operation,” — a term President Vladimir Putin uses to refer his war in Ukraine — the annexation of Crimea and Western sanctions.

Critics say the move is a part of a sustained effort to indoctrinate school children and stifle any independent thinking.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has always maintained that Moscow’s unprovoked aggression against Ukraine is an effort to liberate the country from a “Nazi regime” and Western influence. He even went as far as suggesting there was no such thing as an independent Ukraine, insisting instead that the country has traditionally been part of Russia and that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people.”

Elsewhere, the authors tell students that when they look for information about Ukraine on the internet, they should remember that there is a “global industry for the production of staged videos and fake photos and videos.”

Since coming to power in 2000, Putin has always emphasized the importance of education and programs for young people, pushing for reforms, according to Katerina Tertytchnaya, an associate professor of comparative politics at University College London

“This is a long-term investment policy on the part of the Kremlin, they care about the younger generations and how they see the state and how they interact with it,” she said.

Read the full story here.

Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, defended progress made by Ukraine in its counteroffensive.

He argued that before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian army was “hysterically feared and not even imagined to be effectively fought against.”

In a video released on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the counteroffensive hasn’t been easy and is “happening probably slower” than some had hoped.

His remarks came after CNN reported that Western officials describe increasingly “sobering” assessments about Ukrainian forces’ ability to retake significant territory as they struggle to break through Russia’s multi-layered defensive lines, according to senior US and Western officials briefed on the latest intelligence.

See Podolyak’s full tweet:

Poland will send more troops to its Belarusian border after the country’s Border Guard asked for 1,000 more people to be deployed there, Polish state news agency PAP reported on Wednesday. 

According to the Polish defense ministry, there are currently around 2,000 people stationed on the border.

While Blaszczak has agreed to send more troops to the border, he is yet to confirm the exact number, according to PAP.

Some context: Tensions have been escalating in recent weeks between the NATO member and key Kremlin ally after Poland accused Belarus of allowing Russian mercenary group Wagner to move towards the country’s border.

On Friday, Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Paweł Jabłoński told CNN’s Isa Soares that Poland would send more troops to the border, citing the need to be “resilient.”

Smoke rises from the Zagorsk Optical and Mechanical Plant in the city of Sergiev Posad, northeast of Moscow.

At least 56 people were injured in an explosion at a mechanical plant Wednesday in the city of Sergiev Posad, located northeast of Moscow, the governor of Moscow region, Andrei Vorobyov, said in an update.

Russia’s Investigative Committee said it has opened a criminal investigation into the incident. 

“In total, 56 people asked for medical help. 30 are now in the hospital, six of them are in intensive care,” the governor said in a Telegram post. “Another 26 people went to the emergency room - they did not need hospitalization, after the examination, the doctors let them go home.”

Rescue teams continue to working at the site of the explosion as more people could remain under the rubble. “Rescuers will need about 12 hours to clear the rubble. There may still be people left, three have already been removed - doctors assess their condition as serious,” the official added.

Russian state media reported earlier Wednesday, citing local authorities, that the source of detonation was a pyrotechnics warehouse rented by a third company on the site of the Zagorsk Optical and Mechanical Plant, which makes optical systems for the Russian military. The cause of the explosion is a violation of technological processes, they added. 

A representative from Russia’s Investigative Committee told TASS news agency that suggestions of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) attack on the plant have not been confirmed. The official cause of an explosion is being determined by authorities, they said.

“One thing is clear, that the explosion was powerful, and it was in the pyrotechnics workshop,” he added.

The explosion was captured on security cameras and car dashcams in the small city. Video shared on social media shows a huge mushroom-shaped plume of smoke rising over the plant.

An eyewitness named Nikolai said in an interview with MASH, an independent Russian media blog present at the scene, that there used to be a munition factory at the site before “it was sold and turned into pyrotechnics factory.”

“The company went bankrupt; it is not clear who worked there and what they did there. What caused the explosion is also unclear,” Nikolai said.

The eyewitness said “the bang was very strong and immediate color of the explosion was orange before it turned into grey smoke. Usually, when pyrotechnics explode you can smell sulfur — but there was absolutely no smell of sulfur. There were no detonations — only a big bang.”

Kyiv claimed on Wednesday that it struck a Russian command post in the city of Nova Kakhovka, as the Ukrainian military ramps up activity in the southern Kherson region amid a sweeping counteroffensive.

Nova Kakhovka is located on the occupied east bank of the Dnipro River, where Ukrainian forces reportedly carried out a raid on Tuesday. Kyiv refused to confirm reports of the operation.

“At about 10:00 a.m. (local time), the Armed Forces of Ukraine hit a command post of the Russian army in the temporarily occupied Nova Kakhovka,” the Strategic Communications Department of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on Telegram.

CNN cannot independently verify this claim, but videos posted by Stratcom filmed on Wednesday show plumes of smoke rising over the city.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday he held a meeting with top military commanders on the counteroffensive.

Some context: Earlier this week Zelensky conceded that the counteroffensive has been “difficult,” he said in a video released by his office on Tuesday.

This prompted US officials to acknowledge that Ukraine’s recent progress had been slowed.

“Even the Ukrainians…including President (Volodymyr) Zelensky, have said that they’re not going as far or as fast as he would like,” White House National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby told CNN on Tuesday

Analysis: The primary challenge for Ukrainian forces is the continued difficulty of breaking through Russia’s multi-layered defensive lines in the eastern and southern parts of the country, which are marked by tens of thousands of mines and vast networks of trenches.

Ukrainian forces have incurred staggering losses there, leading Ukrainian commanders to hold back some units to regroup and reduce casualties.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has discussed plans for Moscow to bolster the country’s forces on its western borders, as the war in Ukraine has ramped up tensions between countries in the region.

“Today, at the meeting of the Board, we will consider issues related to the creation of the Leningrad and Moscow military districts with the simultaneous strengthening of groupings of troops of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation on our western borders,” Shoigu said, according to a readout from a board meeting published by the Defense Ministry on Wednesday.

Shoigu cited Poland’s increased militarization as among the reasons for the expansion, saying the move threatens the “occupation” of Russian territory.

“There are plans to create on a regular basis the so-called Polish-Ukrainian connection supposedly to ensure the security of Western Ukraine, but in fact – for the subsequent occupation of this territory,” territory,” he said at a meeting of the board of the military department.

Some background: Earlier this month, Poland said it would deploy more troops at its border with Belarus, a Kremlin ally, amid an escalation in military tensions between both countries.

Thousands of fighters from the Russian mercenary group Wagner were sent to Belarus after a failed mutiny against Moscow in June. They have since been moving towards a key corridor in the region, a thin strip of land between Poland and Lithuania called the Suwalki gap, in an apparent attempt to put pressure on NATO and EU members.

The war in Ukraine prompted leaders in Europe to rethink their national security strategy in the face of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has long sought to undermine NATO expansion in the region.und: Earlier this month, Poland said it will deploy more troops at the border with Belarus, a Kremlin ally, amid an escalation in military tensions between both countries.

Thousands of fighters from the Russian mercenary group Wagner were sent to Belarus after a failed mutiny against Moscow in June. They have since been moving towards a key corridor in the region, the Suwalki gap, in an apparent attempt to put pressure on NATO and EU members.

The war in Ukraine prompted leaders in Europe to rethink their national security strategy in the face of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has long sought to undermine NATO expansion in the region.

CNN’s Sana Noor Haq contributed reporting.

Kyiv refused to confirm reports from Russia that its forces carried out a key operation along the Dnipro River, as Ukraine struggles to make sizeable gains in its counteroffensive in the southeastern region.

Here are the latest developments:

Ukrainian forces have achieved “partial success” on the southern front, Ukrainian officials have said.

Ukrainian forces are also continuing “to conduct offensive actions on the southern flank around the town of Bakhmut, consolidating the achieved positions,” Maliar said.

In the east: Russian forces are focusing their attention on the area around the city of Kupyansk in Kharkiv region, Maliar said.

Ukraine liberated the city from Russian forces last autumn and it has recently come under increased shelling.

Some context: President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video released by his office on Tuesday the Ukrainian counteroffensive has been “difficult” and is “happening probably slower” than some had hoped.

Western officials have also spoken of increasingly “sobering” assessments about Kyiv’s ability to retake significant territory, senior US officials told CNN. US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said the offensive is “not without its difficulties, but they keep trying.”

The reported raid on the occupied east bank of the Dnipro River in the Kherson region is “not confirmed” by the military’s General Staff at this stage, Ukrainian officials have said.

The raid which allegedly took place on Tuesday was reported by Russian state media and military bloggers.

Ukrainian officials alluded to an unspecified task being “completed” on Tuesday – but did not go into any more detail.

Some context: Analysts believe Ukrainian action in Kherson is designed to keep Russian troops in the area and prevent their re-deployment to the front in Zaporizhzhia, a vitally important southern region.

Reclaiming Zaporizhzhia is the key to Kyiv’s military cutting off occupied southern Ukraine from the Russia-annexed Crimean peninsula, which it has controlled since 2014. That would effectively sever the land route between territory newly claimed in Russia’s invasion and territory it claimed nearly a decade ago.

Ukrainian forces first established a bridgehead on the Russian-controlled east bank of the Dnipro River near the Antonivsky Bridge in June, as seen in this image from June 8.

Ukrainian forces conducted a raid across the Dnipro River in the Kherson region on Tuesday, attempting to land near the Russian-occupied village of Kozachi Laheri, state media and military bloggers said.

Pro-Russian media also claimed the raid took place, posting a video of their correspondent claiming Ukrainian forces tried to land near the village of Kazachi Lagerya but that “their actions did not bring results.”

Some context: Ukrainian forces first established a bridgehead on the Russian-controlled east bank of the Dnipro River near the Antonivsky Bridge in June.

On July 1, the Russian-appointed governor of occupied Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, said it had been eliminated following almost a week of heavy fighting in the area.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said in its latest update that Ukrainian forces are present on the east bank, although it remains unclear whether Ukrainian troops have established an enduring presence.

Natalia Humeniuk, head of the United Coordinating Press Center of Security and Defense Forces of South of Ukraine, dismissed the claims.

What Ukrainian officials say: Bohdan Senyk, head of the Public Relations Department of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, told CNN: “We don’t have any official information yet.”

The nature of the raid remains unclear and CNN is unable to verify these claims.

An 18-year-old man was killed and three other men were wounded after Russian shelling hit the southern Ukrainian district of Nikopol, a local military official said Wednesday.

Serhii Lysak, head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration, said those injured had suffered mine-blast trauma and shrapnel wounds.

The shelling also damaged power lines, homes and a church, he added.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks during a press conference in Vilnius, Lithuania on July 12.

One of Ukraine’s greatest tragedies as it pursues a critical offensive that has, so far, failed to meet its own and Western expectations is that it cannot, by itself, decide its destiny.

President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government is dependent on a massive pipeline of US and Western armaments. And Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose historical obsessions and personal power calculations thrust Ukraine into this horrific war, will also have a great say in if and when it ends.

So, while battlefield sacrifices will decide how much seized territory Ukraine recovers, the outcome of the war will also be shaped by outside factors, including shifting political forces in the US, Moscow and European capitals.

A stalled offensive and a winter stalemate, for instance, would have particular ramifications in the United States since it could heighten questions over US support for the war that will be pushed into an acrimonious election year.

Americans are braced for a potential clash between President Joe Biden, who revived the Western alliance and is Ukraine’s most critical outside supporter, and ex-President Donald Trump, a NATO skeptic who admires Putin and has pledged to end the war in 24 hours, likely on Putin’s terms. And even if Trump is not the GOP nominee in 2024, ebbing public support for the war could hurt Biden.

Therefore, for political, as well as strategic reasons, there is huge pressure on Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive this summer to produce significant battlefield breakthroughs.

But so far, the push is more of a slog than a blitzkrieg, raising the possibility the war could last at least deep into next year. If so, the elastic equation that underpins the entire conflict — involving Ukraine’s capacity to fight, Americans’ appetite for multi-billion dollar aid packages and Putin’s tolerance for horrendous casualties — will be even more taut.

Read Collinson’s full analysis here.